#a non-binary voice

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Transgender Discussion and Music: A Non-Binary Voice

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CWMEA Presentation-”Transgender Discussion and Music: A Non-Binary Voice” Sketches Part 2

I first started with composing only instrumentals. At that age, I was only writing for solo instruments and chamber music ensembles.

A highlight for me with composing was that no one was telling me to, and I was only doing it for my sake. When you have that kind of freedom to make that decision, there is a lot you can explore about yourself, even if it takes time for you to discover your meanings or what you were trying to get across.

In this first sample, you hear Stravinsky. These pieces are The Firebird Dance, and Dances of the Young Maidens.

In this second sample, you are hearing my original composition Lost in an Elevator written in 2010 my sophomore year of high school. It is a chamber music piece composed for two alto saxophones, upright bass, drum set, strings, noisy sound effects, and a vibraphone.

You can hear some of the influences of Stravinsky in my piece. Here is a slide with our influences and crossovers.

Considering how this piece grew from the second pop music sample, I consider this piece I wrote to be an exploration of the version of masculinity I created for myself as a non-binary person.

When I reached my sophomore year of college in 2014, I presented this piece in a master class to the composer Greg Simon. I wanted to do further edits and revisions, and I actually thought about lessening the stylistic changes, shortening sections, and minimizing the manic atmosphere of the piece. What I was surprised to hear was that Greg Simon didn’t reach for critiques like that at all. Instead he suggested that I extend some of the sections to further develop the motives and themes, and that my stylistic changes were appropriate and worked to the piece’s favor. As long as my motives and themes had a little more space to breathe and develop, the listener would be able to hear a clearer sense of unified identity.

When we got to studying Stravinsky, it was for a MUS 231 class. I had a lot of exposure to Stravinsky in my other classes, such as the end of the music theory series and the orchestration class I took. Just being able to study the work of Stravinsky really helped me better understand why the composer at the master class gave a response like that to me, and helped me in stabilizing my sense of identity.

I did one of my research papers on the reception of Stravinsky’s The Firebird. This was the first ballet in the collaborative series with the Ballet Russes. Before learning about Stravinsky in college, I knew of him through association of Frank Zappa and other bands, and I knew about the Rite of Spring and Symphony of Psalms, but didn’t feel well studied in those works.

When I first learned about Stravinsky, I thought him to be the quintessentially Russian composer, writing Russian music, embodying Russian identity. However, this eventually came to me as a slight misnomer. My research paper about the critical reception of The Firebird was about how the ballet was considered the first sensational work of Stravinsky that sent him into international fame in Paris, France. However, if Stravinsky had premiered the ballet’s work in his home country of Russia, he probably wouldn’t have reached his level of status as a composer.

The French absolutely raved about Stravinsky’s innovative accomplishments with the piece. Russian critics largely didn’t appreciate the work. They didn’t even premiere the works with the ballet in Russia, as it was still seen as a novelty art form. They also didn’t appreciate the blending of French musical influences in the score, and the Oriental influences in the ballet. Overall, the “Russian identity” within this music, from the Russian perspective, was seen as largely “contrived” and “manufactured.”

What was so amazing to me though was, despite these conflicts, the Ballet Russes and Stravinsky were set in an insistent spirit to make this as a Russian version of a Gesamtkunst-werk, or a total artwork combining many art forms. Yet the participants in Ballet Russes were largely outsiders in their home country, with many of the patrons and other Russian composers such as Rimsky-Korsakov himself largely disapproving of the Ballet Russes.

In a funny sense, I had this image of Stravinsky bravely and wildly insisting this was going to be a Russian masterwork towards a large amount of Russian people misunderstanding. Likewise, I had this image in my own small hometown and community in which I wrote Lost in an Elevator, and saw how I used that piece as a brave and wild means to appear towards others as a masculine, when I was really a trans person not being entirely understood and trying to understand others. I could laugh at this, because of our comparisons in scope: I’m Timmie in a small redneck town with a chamber piece, and he’s Stravinsky in France insisting of a Russian masterwork for his country! It helped lessen my anxieties towards how I related to people with this piece.

Despite what the Russians thought, it was a pivotal time for the composer Stravinsky, and when he later went on to write Petrushka and The Rite of Spring, he was able to construct more of a singular and original identity for himself as a composer, through the blending of these multiple national identities and other disparate compositional elements. Despite many of the jarring compositional techniques used within The Rite of Spring, the piece is all held together in continuity with the organic use and development of Russian folk tunes. Today, we consider all of these ballets to be part of his Russian period of composing, despite these historical complexities. Stravinsky’s sound is seen as something so singular and original with these blending of the modern and traditional, and he really left a framework for other composers to write in whose works are seen as suspenseful, theatrical, and thrilling.

I got back to revising my piece Lost in an Elevator for its first premiere in an annual concert series Collage back in 2016, a concert where we demonstrated the diversity of musical talent our school had. I rearranged the piece for a trio: upright bass, soprano saxophone, and flute. Taking the advice I picked up from the master class and the studies of Stravinsky, I went into revising the piece with a renewed sense of confidence. I developed further sections, and gave the chance for the main theme to have more breath inside the stylistic changes.

I passed the audition with my trio, yet I was in a very difficult place in my life when I performed it with the group. I only just started exploring my gender expressions by wearing dresses and other clothes, and I was at a very frightened state in my life because the question weighed on me that I needed to physically change my body. I was walking around during that month with no stable sense of a self-image, I was depressed, and I felt terrified for my safety.

Once I performed this piece with my group, however, I experienced a very spiritual and mental sensation: I remembered so many men in my life that had a positive influence on me, and I felt an overwhelming feeling wash over me of how proud I was to be in my body. I left the rehearsal sessions and performance of this piece feeling overjoyed and happy.

I reflect back on this now and recognize how this piece and further studies as a music student really helped with my struggles in gender identity.

Much of my feelings towards lessening stylistic changes and shortening sections for the piece came from an internal place of shame and stigma of my non-binary identity. I saw this piece arising from a place where I was really trying to navigate masculinity: competitiveness through intellectual fervor, aggression with harmonic language and the rock beat of the drum set, and a dark, twisted sense of humor. However, Greg Simon from the master class came to me, recognized these qualities in the piece, and gave a small piece of advice that allowed those internal qualities to further play out.

When I look back on my studies about Stravinsky, it really eased me to see his indirect influence in my work. It really inspired me the historical difficulties Stravinsky and the Ballet Russes were facing in trying to blur the lines with these national identities and compositional elements to create something of singular theatrical and programmatic cohesion. Just as I felt I was blurring the lines of gender identity and compositional elements with my piece for my smaller communities.

When I look back on the spiritual and mental experience I had with performing my piece, I realize now why it put me at such mental ease. I often saw myself stressed with the expressions I used in this piece, what it may have been emoting in me as a person, and how it may have seemed incongruent with masculinity I was trying to fit into at the time I wrote it. But, in the context of music major world, it was socially congruent and absolutely accepted by my community. I had the space and opportunity to allow those characteristics of my masculinity in me that I shamed so heavily, and was able to place it in a context to entertain others, tell a story, and engage with the listeners.

I always had a fond relationship with the music of Debussy. Debussy brings me memories of my sisters playing his pieces, filling the entire piano room with The Girl With Flaxen Hair, and The Cathedral. In the first sample during the second segment, you hear the piece The Cathedral for piano, and also, of course in the first segment, Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun.

When we read about Debussy in music history, so much of his work was tied into the label of sensuality. In The Cathedral sample you heard, a dreamy like atmosphere of an underwater Cathedral is supposed to be evoked.

In a lecture Leonard Bernstein did, he talked a lot about the sensuality of Prelude to the Afternoon of the Faun. He talked about how Debussy’s techniques evoked an aura of eroticism. Bernstein used this article to also talk about Debussy’s general philosophy of composing, which was simply exploring sounds and patterns that were pleasing to the ears instead of being so heavily theory oriented and analytical. Debussy seemed to be from an aesthetic that believed in trying to find your own sensual language as a composer.

I started writing, composing, and developing pieces like these in middle school. It was always written on guitar first. The first segment you heard was a demonstration of a parallel chord progression pattern moving upwards, with a saxophone improvising over it. The piece is called Improvised.

The second segment you heard was my piece for guitar Whispered. The third segment you heard was a version called Stained Glass, which was composed for an Orchestration class my sophomore year of college. When I composed the piece for guitar, I felt myself approaching composition like Debussy did: exploring sounds and patterns instead of being analytical.

I was inspired to continue moving the fingers on the guitar fret in parallel motion for the chord patterns like Debussy exploring the chords and intervals on the piano. However, for this composition, I would adjust my fingers on the frets accordingly in order to make the chords stay consistently within the key of D minor. I channeled a lot of that influence of guitar playing through Joni Mitchell, whom you heard through the feminine music sample. Differently from how I approached the parallel motion that you heard in the first sample, I would move my frets but allow much of the guitar strings to ring openly. Through this, I would allow moments of dissonance and consonance to freely pass through each other, and allowed the voicings to occasionally double up with another note on the open guitar.

When I was able to play these kinds of compositions on guitar, I would very much flood the room like how my sisters would do with playing pieces by Debussy. I would turn the guitar up to a clean tone with an overwhelming echo effect. Years back, analyzing my own feelings when I would play these pieces, I noticed that I would go to school and struggle with body dysphoria. I’d go home, play a piece like this, and experience that sensual quality that we greatly attribute to Debussy’s music. I would play it and have a feeling that I was developing a clear perception of my body. Playing this on guitar was helping me sense how my body actually was.

On a more social level, when I finished composing my piece Whispered in the eighth grade, I had such a feeling of relief that I was saying everything about me that needed to be said. The social dysphoria I was experiencing was being released.

When I look back on why I felt this way, and looking at it through the lenses of Debussy’s aesthetic of developing a language for you as a composer, it makes sense why I felt this way. I started writing about this piece again after coming out as non-binary, and I felt a great feeling of symbolic interpretation being communicated to me.

On a basic level, it was such a great idea for me to hear this piece in orchestration in Stained Glass, because it communicates internal quality that I commonly perceive through my interactions with non-binary folks… We can tend to be very meditative and calm people like how you may hear it in the guitar version, but on the other end of the coin with the orchestrated version, very fiery and passionate.

On the symbolic level, I saw the two moving notes of the chord progression to be representative of my desire to express something aligned with my internal self. I saw the four unchanging, static notes to be heavily imposed societal gender norms that were refusing to move. In combination, I was able to hear a sort of place in my world as a non-binary and genderqueer person. There are moments where the chords and voicings in the orchestration sound fraught and overwhelming, just like how I was seeing gender norms at the time. But then they reach places of consonance in combination with the static notes that demonstrate an ability to be aligned with a society and people around me. In other parts of the orchestration that I didn’t play, there is a glorious, heroic segment with an ascending line with sprightly woodwind scales moving through the texture. Noticing how I always naturally ended the phrases with something of consonance, I was able to infer for myself that I felt a possibility and hope to be aligned with a society and community in my body.

While I am not sure if I could have given a symbolic analysis at the time I wrote it, I felt I was successful in this piece with aligning myself with a Debussy philosophy of developing a musical language for myself. It was really able to communicate something to my future self in college, and that is what mattered in the long run.

In this sample you are hearing Schubert’s Symphony No. 8 in B Minor, the Unfinished Symphony. This is Movement 1: Allegro Moderato. You can do heavy analysis of all the mode mixtures that Schubert utilizes in the piece, and you can also analyze through a framework of a circle of thirds key centers. Here is what a circle of thirds chord progression pattern looks like (shows slide.) Sometimes Schubert would navigate the circle of thirds masterfully through well thought out mode mixture tricks, but other times he would allow the changes to be not so sudden. I was able to observe Schubert’s use of the circle of thirds pattern in a piece of his I analyzed for MUS 493: Impromptu No. 1 in Eb Minor, Drei Klavierstücke, Movement 1: Allegro Assai. MUS 493 was a special topics class that analyzed all of the symphonies of Beethoven and some of the symphonies of Schubert.

In this sample you are hearing my piece Ducks, which I wrote my sophomore year of high school. The mode mixture I use in this piece is nowhere near as extensive as Schubert’s use of it, but the influence had definitely made a mark.

My senior year of college, my professor Dr. Block brought me an article Constructions of Subjectivity in Schubert’s Music by musicologist Dr. Susan McClary. She focused in on the Unfinished 8th Symphony by Schubert and talked about how people during Schubert’s time, solely based on the compositional aspects of his music, was suspected to be gay by many. She also talked about how many place Schubert under a label of a feminine paradigm for his music, because of his lyrical musical qualities and very personal nature of his compositions.

Now, Susan McClary was given a lot of criticism for exploring the question of Schubert’s sexuality and the feminine paradigm through his music, because during the time many people at musicological conferences were either condemning of homosexuality, or found the question not to be worth exploring at all.

This article, however, helped me tremendously in my personal life, so I sent McClary some of my writings and she immediately replied back to me thanking me. She talked about how she wrote that article specifically because she had queer students coming up to her saying they noticed Schubert’s compositional tendencies within their early compositions as composers. I was completely moved by the article because I was teleported back to my earliest explorations into compositions trying to completely immerse myself in mode mixture patterns, and one of my first earliest (and unsuccessful) instrumental compositions was using the circle of thirds sequence of tonal centers.

Just to clarify if this doesn’t sound like a big deal… there is a section in the article that says expressions in art and music do not have to necessarily align with one’s identity at all. It’s absolutely true. Expressions and identity are separate entities. Just the very fact that somebody composes in a certain way aligned with another composer, that doesn’t make them have a similar personality to the composer by any means. But I am going to draw you again to the questions of measurements in consistencies, habits, and patterns of expressions, to help explore the fine line between expression and identity.

Schubert wasn’t the first inventor of mode mixture patterns, but how far he went with them was completely unprecedented at the time. I also went very far with my obsession with applying mode mixture. I would take long trips home from a vacation and be obsessively fantasizing about all the possibilities with mode mixtures and circle of thirds for upcoming compositions of mine.

Within Schubert’s time, he was really pushing the confines of sonata form and the symphony ideals through mode mixture and circle of thirds, and challenging the basic format of sonata form of the tonic-dominant relationship. Within my time, I was getting the inspiration for mode mixture and circle of thirds because I was wanting to stray away from my culture of pop and rock music that was very centered in one key all the time.

As far as relating goes, I have no idea how Schubert was feeling at the time with his supposed gay identity. But I imagine he was a complete outcast and shamed, just as I was feeling in my time. Did these defiant musical expressions align across our stretches of times because of how we were made to feel defiant based on our sexuality? How did we align so well with absorption of our completely different music influences, and while being completely different people? Was this the only way we could express ourselves, and take control of who we were internally through the means of music? And what does this say about our underlying humanity?

Susan cited another musicologist in the article: Jackson. Jackson talks about how Schubert was only put under a category of feminine because of his lack of conformity towards the norms of composition. Instead, Jackson interpreted Schubert’s expressions as “participating in a cultural construction of masculinity,” as the characteristics within Schubert’s music are often aligned with the narratives of gay men: “excess, pleasure, play, porous identities, free exchange between self and others.”

When I first read the article, it was before the summer of my senior year, where I hadn’t discovered my identity yet as trans. But I was in a place of slight annoyance with the article. I almost hated the quote that seemed to me a stereotype of gay men, as I didn’t see or understand how those qualities were playing out in my life narrative. Then I was annoyed by this need for a feminine paradigm for musicologists to understand the works of Schubert, and how it seemed he was just simply thrown under that label because he was seen as “otherly” with his supposed sexuality.

In a funny sense, when I came out as trans and explored myself, I was trying to navigate through my several lifetime moments of constant shame, stigma, and persistent instructions, replies, and reactions telling me to stop acting a certain way because, (for a lack of a better word to be describing my actions), it was too feminine. Then I come across something as obscure as a musicological article pointing at me, telling me: “Hahaha. GAY! Feminine!”

In a more serious sense, I was having past compositions of mine being placed under a feminine paradigm, and I was curious to make something out of it. This construction of feminine on the very basis of my sexuality was an all too common oppression in my lifetime, and gave me a lot of discomfort, stress, and mental disconnect. But the truth is that we are social beings, so our construction of our purely individual selves comes through a constant interpersonal and institutional guise of other people. I’m one that needed to always remind myself of that three-dimensional quality of people. Schubert and I just happened to reach out interpersonally under similar expressions that may have been a result of our internal queer sensuality, and the institutional decision of the musicological world just happened to call it feminine, or even an alternative version of masculinity. This doesn’t make us feminine people necessarily.

I needed to move away from my more literal and internal struggles with my dysphoria towards femininity and how that played a role in my life, in order to try and better appreciate this need for a label of a feminine paradigm in music composition. I acknowledged and rationalized for myself that my moments struggling with body dysphoria that pointed me towards femininity came from a reality where I internalized something of myself that wasn’t congruent to the desires and wishes of my future, pure, and truest internal self.

In other words, I had communications sent to me, both directly and indirectly, that on the sole basis of being gay… I was no longer an heir to the family, being the only child in a “boy’s body” with three other sisters. I was not fulfilling the duties of manhood that were laid out for me and my male privilege. There was something inherently wrong with me for not finding my self worth and value in marrying a wife someday that would bear my children, even though this would be impossible for me with my sexuality. How this was further amplified in my school system for no acknowledgement of my existence as a queer person. I was being prayed for. I was going to have employers in my future figure out my sexual identity and, on the basis of that, discriminate against me, and put me at risk for financial and job security.

When you internalize a lot of that hatred and stigma, I found it to be only natural that I was one that internalized a very fluid relationship with gender during my adolescence. On some days, I would wake up and believe myself to be of those hyper alternative masculine traits that Jackson spelled out in the article. On those days, I would try to have hope for my internal self that I could escape from the pathologization of queer people by my mother and someday find a fulfilling life through gay romance.

On other days, this pain of not fulfilling the demands my family made upon me, the confusion over lack of queer visibility, and the isolation if anyone else existed like me and had hope for a future, was enough to internalize body dysphoria, and fall into horrifying perceptions of my body. Those many other days I believed my hormones to be an unnatural growth that wasn’t pleasurable. Those many other days I only had dissonance towards that specific and necessary body area that I believed could fulfill the family pressure of bearing the grandchildren my mother “needed.” In other words, it was partial body dysphoria wishing for an androgynous body.

Schubert and I have different life stories and struggles, as he was an outcast, his music was not appreciated in his time, probably experienced mental illness in his lifetime, and died really young either of typhoid fever or syphilis. But I was not surprised I was to turn to creativity in music and a similar aesthetic of Schubert’s. These internalized feelings of defiance, confusion, and isolation are what led us to mode mixture and circle of thirds. Ironically, if you were you have asked me at the time I was writing that music; I sincerely felt it was carrying my queer identity.

After I felt I had sorted through that realization, I had more room to try and better appreciate what was the need for a binary paradigm of masculinity and femininity for art music. It’s as simple as this: it makes it easier for folks to understand, and that can make it more accessed and appreciated by people. Almost just like how I am not one that cares to annihilate everyone’s desire to align with a binary pronoun he/him/his or she/her/hers: it makes it easier for folks to understand, and that can make it a starting point to be better accessed and appreciated by people.

I’m going to simplify how the musicological historical trends of approaching appreciation towards art music seemed to occur. Looking through the masculine and feminine paradigm, I noticed a difference in appreciation developments.

The supposed “masculine” composers were being grasped in appreciation first for their compositional structure: organicism, the ability to take a small motive and apply it to a foundation of the whole piece, consistency in exploring all the possibilities in a key center and their neighbor keys. This was how musicological studies were approached first in music academia, and the masculine composers were appreciated earlier on. After awhile, musicologists were then led to appreciate the cultural, communal, and interpersonal ways that this touched people.

Whereas these supposed “feminine” composers were being grasped in appreciation first for their structures into people’s personal, domestic, and everyday lives: the interaction of the melody line and accompaniment creating a program and story, the folk and pastoral qualities from the art songs even to the symphonies, and especially these uncanny abilities for these composers to transfer an aura of their mental, physical, or spiritual state of being that affects personal lives… even years later. These musicological studies were approached later in music academia. Feminine composers were appreciated much later on. After this appreciation developed, musicologists were able to better see how structurally sound the compositions were.

Dr. Block mentioned in my 493 class that, while we haven’t moved out this binary paradigm for art music, there is so much more appreciation for the feminine paradigm in music. Just recently within the past decade, an annual Top Ten lists of composers finally included Schubert. This step forward in appreciating the feminine paradigm is beneficial and broadens the whole field.

What was really wonderful about that class with Dr. Block was that we studied nearly everything about the lives of Beethoven and Schubert. When we dove into so many of their works, it really lessened the confines of these binary labels. Specifically Beethoven was considered masculine and Schubert feminine. But an honest look into all of their life’s work saw approaches and appreciations that demanded us to see all of these sides of them. Beethoven may have been known as more heroic, brave, and masculine in his better-known symphonies, but he was also composing as a means to evoke unprecedented humor and pastoral qualities in sacrifice of the traditional masculine compositional paradigms, and his Ninth Symphony’s program participated in a whole political revolution worth studying historically. Likewise, Schubert was more known for his song cycles and art songs. The feminine tag was more derived from those works such as Winterreise and Die schöne Müllerin, and only through folks discovering that he was a serious symphony composer as well was when the considerations of him as a participant in masculine cultural constructions was opened up.

As far as observing that humanity of Beethoven and Schubert through studying their music and lifetime, it really coincided with perspectives that I needed to grasp about gender. Knowing someone’s gender identity, if they are masculine, feminine, both, neither, or other, is a great starting point in knowing someone, but really they’re human and it’s just one facet of their identity. Everyone is capable of limitless expressions, no matter what your identity. Being able to observe this through master composers was beneficial. I’m not too concerned if these labels are attributed to Beethoven and Schubert, as long as that doesn’t keep others from appreciating their other works, music appreciation in general, and recognizing all the sides to them as artists.

Likewise, even though musicology maybe needed to start from a more “masculine” angle in order to be recognized as an institutional valid study at first, the reality is the average person isn’t going to be listening for measurement values based off strictly these “masculine traits.” I’m also not one arguing that musicology’s history can easily be summed up as a start from the masculine towards the feminine, because I don’t believe that. Music has always been appreciated three dimensionally by people: composition, performance, and relating to humanity. It is great that musicology strives towards appreciation and study through all of these angles. It’s true that they are studying music at a much higher level than the average person. With that being said, musicology has to continue to strive for listening to music like an average person would in that sense of three-dimensional appreciation. The field must never lose sight of that.

This is the single great thing that studying music in college continued to bring me back to: listening. Just listening. Cherishing that gift of listening. Being aware that through listening to one person’s music, we understand spirits in connection to our spirits.

Back towards my pop music samples, I remember that if you really needed to throw a binary label on how I was appreciating that music back in the day, it was through a masculine angle, for all of the samples. I was so technically analytical with noticing all the extra complexities in harmonies, melodies, and arrangements in comparison to rock and pop music on the radio. Later though, it was inescapable that this appreciation would come about through realizing this idea of the music as a socially stabilizing force for relating to humanity, for all of the samples. You could argue that since this had to do with relating, it would be feminine. But I don’t enjoy thinking of it in those terms. I just recognize that I was able to seek out my spirit through the help of several other spirits within music, no matter what angle I was coming towards my music appreciation. Even if I didn’t consciously recognize it at the time, it was always in my subconscious that those pop samples were communicating towards me.

I felt one instance I perfectly embodied this gift of listening and cherishing spirituality in music outside of my classroom was through the music of Anohni. She is someone that identifies as a trans woman, but is someone really representing for non-binary folks as well. All I know is that the first time I heard her, it was the cabaret folk group Antony and the Johnsons off the album I Am A Bird Now. I put on the first track “Hope There’s Someone” and almost cried instantly. I didn’t though, as I was still closeted and not out as anything: gay or trans. I had no idea she was transgender, and what I found her from was just through a string of influences of many of my favorite singer-songwriters. But I was completely drawn to her voice’s timbre: deep, soulful, dark, vibrato-laden, strange, and hearkening back to the singing stylistics of Nina Simone. I was captivated, and in that sitting I listened to the whole album, completely stunned.

Later, I found her orchestral album Cut the World, and was blown away by the title track that was originally composed for an opera The Life and Death of Marina Abramovic. The second track was a spoken word piece, where she talked about her art collective, their philosophy about Future Feminism, and their advocacy in collective consciousness about ecocide. I started to watch her interviews on YouTube constantly, as I was fascinated by her personality. The summer before I discovered my trans identity, I would sing in the car to her music a lot while doing pizza deliveries. I found myself unintentionally emulating her vocal style, more than any other artist I had played in my car before.

Anohni took a complete turn away from her band Antony and the Johnsons to release an electronic music protest album Hopelessness in 2016. She left her former name Antony Hegarty and took on her spirit name Anohni. I collected that album and let the production qualities and brave lyric themes wash over me.

Within that year, I came out as trans, and put on that first album again of Hope There’s Someone. Then I unabashedly cried, as I realized the album drew me in because it was completely putting to voice nearly everything about my transgender experience hopes, dreams, fears, and aspirations to a tee. I don’t know if other parts of Anohni’s personality, (such as being raised Catholic and the similar feminine influences of Kate Bush and Björk), played a role in this album voicing my feelings so well. Nevertheless, noticing this full circle approach that this was always my intended reaction validated my personality, domestically created a space for me where I could continue to carve and emerge myself from, and lived with me in everyday life.

Looking back on my singer-songwriter material in high school, I noticed that we sang about similar subject matter. Both of us composed songs about our personal experiences with body dysphoria, even though I was the one late with understanding these voicings of dysphoria in both my past songs and her songs. Her song Cut the World perfectly voiced how unbearable my gender dysphoria could get if not kept in control. Both of us composed songs about neuro-divergence, such as Anohni’s song Epilepsy is Dancing and my song Look Me In The Eyes about the animal science professor Temple Grandin and her life story with autism. (Which was performed on my senior recital, and composed before I knew of Anohni.) We did it in that same mysterious light of a third person narrative, but noticing how I was trying to reach out for Grandin within the exploration of this song to try and understand my potential neurodivergence, I was often left to wonder if Anohni reached out in her song Epilepsy is Dancing for similar reasons. (I do not have time to play you my singer-songwriter samples, but their ideas are accessible through the photography art project I gave to you called The Missing Elements.)

I still listen to her album Hopelessness, and it is an album carried with me in coping with the current political landscape. I was drawn to it because she voiced the global issues of today, such as drone bomb nuclear warfare, video surveillance, torture and execution, and ecocide, while hardly singing about identity politics. With that being said, she was able to add lyric twists to the album that clearly communicated to me our shared identity as trans people, in congruence with the musical arrangement.

I feel like it is something that is hard to hear and understand in her music if you are not trans. Probably much how people who lived in the culture of the emergence of jazz and experienced those racial and socio-political oppressions heard the music much differently than we do. However, just like our studies towards jazz, even if we are not going to have their shared life experience, we certainly appreciate and let jazz music live on and allow it to intersect within our lifetime and our culture. Just like in my studies with Western classical art music, we lived completely different lives with completely different cultures for composing music, but reached out for paradigms of composing for relating through similar internal means, and their music intersected in my lifetime and culture. In that light, I personally hope Anohni goes down in history as one of the great trans singer-songwriters of our time, no matter how her music differently affects people across the spectrum of gender identities: trans, cis, or non-binary.